The Rev Jack's Diary
Created | Updated Jul 14, 2004
The Longest Day
I'm fiddling with the old cat's whisker, trying to get radio 2, but all I'm getting is a faint crackle and hiss.
'I think you need a new radio, twinkle!' she said.
'Yeah I know' I reply, 'it's just that I would like
to keep it working.' I hold it, turn it around, looking at it.
'Just think, on this radio, someone listened to the transmissions of London to the French resistance in WW2' I said.
'Well it's lasted and now it has had its day. Just put in the bin and eat your toasty fingers' she said.
Woman have no sense of the historical, the 'it's only going to gather dust and I'm the one that's going to have to clean it' statement that springs to mind, not the fact that this radio, sat in someones life giving information and orders, at some time during the night of the 4th/5th of June 1944 someone heard 'Wound my heart with a monotonous languor' the second part of the transmission to the French resistance that the Invasion of Europe would take place 24 hours later and that person, in all probability, would not see that night out! I'm munching on my toasty fingers, and thinking
this radio needs to work. I finish my breakfast and head off to the shed, with the radio!
I'm out of the shed in time for lunch, with the radio and the bits that look a bit suspect.
'Are you going to buy a new radio?' she inquires.
'Yeah of course I will, but this one is going to be kept in the shed as I think it needs to be kept and working too.' I said. I head off into the local town and buy a nice modern digital radio (with radio 2), and start the quest for the 'bits'. This leads me to 3 shops and some
'OoooOOOoooo, never seen one like that before' remarks. Then I arrive at the last shop - number 4. I enter and the smell of the place tells me that I got it right. This is the place. I stand at the counter and I can see through to the back of the shop. There are glass
accumulators being charged up and the sound of Radio 4 in the background. He appears, at 5' 2" in height, sporting a brown coat, with a pen/pencil in the top pocket!
'Ahh a Marconi Midge, haven't see one of those in years! Bad reception Sir?' he says.
'Yes' I reply.
'Of course in their day they were the best, just built
for the French market. He winks. 'Dropped into France, you know, just built for listening to and, even today, they can give a modern radio a run for their money. It's this tube that gives the problem... there.' He switches it on, it warms up, it is working fine and he flicks a cloth over it.
'That's £5, sir.' he says.
I pay the bill, have a cuppa with him and leave with a lot
of advice about my old radio!
I arrive home with both radios, unwrap the new one, plug it in and find that it's not working. The lights are on but there's no signal. I look at the instructions; 'you might need to change your aerial, or you my not have digital transmissions in your area'. So it's a phone
call, a trip to the shop for a new aerial, then home to fix the new aerial to the wall - and now it works. Nice one, too, but there's something missing, apart from the £110 or so out of my wallet. It's too efficient! It starts when you switch it on and instantly gives a really good clean sound. You can't fault the construction of the integrated circuits, the design of the case but there is a 'but' (and this is a big one - in brackets), one which you may not agree with. It doesn't have the 'tactileness', if that's a word, of my old radio. It doesn't want you to touch it. My missus even asked me to switch it on, not because she can't, she won't - 'I don't like too' - and I'm finding it the same with most modern technological designs. It seems to take you forever to find the 'ON' button/switch. Mobile phones have buttons so small that you've got to carry a 7 year old around with you just to dial a number for you, as your fingers are too big to press a single button.
I'm no technophobe, infact I like technology. Our daily life is a lot easer with it (when it's working), although a lot less simple too, at times. I look at my old radio, quietly amazed at the simplistic wiring, a couple of knobs and a box to live in. I gain a surprising pleasure in just looking and using this old radio. I glance at my computer, knowing how much hair wrenching and screaming abuse at it I've done, trying to make it work. There is just pure frustration. No pleasure is felt using this box of tricks called a computer which is wrong, of course, as I do like it and what I can do with it; write, communicate, play games. It's so versatile, this box of tricks, and that's why it's so much of a frustration to live with, ever evolving!
So today, the longest day of the year, I'm sat in my shed, with my dogs (GOD BLESS'UM), the Marconi Midge playing in the background and I'm on my computer writing. I could have the radio streaming on but I still think its better coming out of the Midge!
The Rev Jack
